TechEye - Nokia shareholders start rebellion and plan a company coup - Commentshttp://www.techeye.net/mobile/nokia-shareholders-start-rebellion-and-plan-a-company-coup
In the wake of last week’s news that Nokia has entered a partnership with Microsoft, a group of nine Nokia Shareholders has published “Nokia Plan B”, a manifesto “to challenge the company’s strategy and partnership with Microsofthttp://www.rssboard.org/rss-specificationen-GBWed, 16 Feb 2011 16:00:14 GMTBy: neerThey also cite multiple Nokia management levels above outsourced R&D efforts to be causing up to 90% management overhead in engineering projects.
There is a saying in Sweden when I used to live there, there are government bureaucracies that yearn to be as monolithic and useless as Nokia.
Having read up on MeeGo, I noticed that the project was launched almost one year ago.
Which means that a great number of people at Nokia arent even aware of it. Yes, it moves that slowly.
Peter brought up Yahoo which is another example of MS rotting a company from the inside. Yahoo at least put up a good fight and MS had to send in Carl Icahn... Nokia's desperation could be seen a mile away.
This move is cute but ultimately wont do much.
Nokia has put ALL their eggs in the same basket, putting the company's neck on the line with the hope that the 1billion dollar worth of hype Windows Phone 7 bought can do for them what it hasnt done yet.
Considering the track record of failures like Kin, Zune and Xbox (yes, theyre not losing billions like the first version but a 56% failure rate is appalingly bad), the horribly received Vista and its meh service pack 2 called 7 and the fact that MS has closed over 50 (this is ballpark but I remember the list and its was in that range) projects/depts in teh past 2 years, there is nothing in MS recent past that suggest that their mobile strategy will fare any better.
The most success MS has had in the field is their extortion racket in which they get Samsung, LG and a few others to pay THEM money for their Linux based phones because they claim it infringes some IP they never specify. (if someone came up to you and said "You have a lovely store here, it would be a shame if something like a fire where to happen. Pay us and we will make sure", you would call them by their real names).
Ive seen many big too big too fail tech companies like DEC go from leader to has been that IM not surprised at Nokias demise.
It truly is a shame about Nokia.http://www.techeye.net/mobile/nokia-shareholders-start-rebellion-and-plan-a-company-coup#comment-34621
http://www.techeye.net/mobile/nokia-shareholders-start-rebellion-and-plan-a-company-coup#comment-34621Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:00:14 GMTneerBy: Carl SherrattWhy can't phone operators run a Application OS-VM in the cloud and just run a hardware-optimised version of a flash player or remote desktop protocol on a mobile to access it? Then you could run what ever App-OS you wanted. Phone manufacturers could return to the game of usability rather than focusing on heavyweight App-OS's, the local OS could return to a phone style OS, highly optimised for long batter life and fast responses to key presses, simple and minimal in bugs. Of course you'd still need OS's optimised configured for phone use but the thin-client layer could integrate local-OS with App-OS, just an idea. Citrix are already working on such concepts with the Citrix Nirvana phone, This must be the future of mobile computing/telephony and surely that's where Nokia could fit with their expertise in high quality user experience?http://www.techeye.net/mobile/nokia-shareholders-start-rebellion-and-plan-a-company-coup#comment-34602
http://www.techeye.net/mobile/nokia-shareholders-start-rebellion-and-plan-a-company-coup#comment-34602Wed, 16 Feb 2011 13:23:01 GMTCarl SherrattBy: MayaThe Nokia Plan B team have raised some significant points in their post outlining how they wish to see the company managed.http://www.techeye.net/mobile/nokia-shareholders-start-rebellion-and-plan-a-company-coup#comment-34573
http://www.techeye.net/mobile/nokia-shareholders-start-rebellion-and-plan-a-company-coup#comment-34573Wed, 16 Feb 2011 09:25:23 GMTMayaBy: ziippyas an ex-nokian, i have to say these 9 are idiots, and clearly know nothing about the company. the microsoft deal was the smartest thing that happened, that i never expected.
i think they should go all the way and kill off series 40 too. nokia should just dominate the high end with wp7 products, and then dominate the low end (i.e. the next 2 billion phones sold).http://www.techeye.net/mobile/nokia-shareholders-start-rebellion-and-plan-a-company-coup#comment-34552
http://www.techeye.net/mobile/nokia-shareholders-start-rebellion-and-plan-a-company-coup#comment-34552Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:20:12 GMTziippyBy: Peter ChanIt would be interesting to see how a small demonstration can escalate to a major revolt that topples a CEO, though I suspect the rather cool climes of Finland would discourage massing of unsatisfied stakeholders, as compared to balmy beaches of the tropics.
I keep a simple cheap Nokia cellphone available as a backup, but the trend towards more sophisticated products was clear at least two years ago, so it really looks that the future of this company will be decided in whatever decision they come to regarding the choice of OS; while making a Faustian bargain with MS looks dubious, going it alone make incur far greater risk than anyone on the Board may actually want to contemplate, and may, in the end, if things go badly, make them vulnerable to hostile takeover in any case, possibly by MS having decided they really want another hardware platform for the mobile market, but like Yahoo, now available at a more cheaper price.http://www.techeye.net/mobile/nokia-shareholders-start-rebellion-and-plan-a-company-coup#comment-34528
http://www.techeye.net/mobile/nokia-shareholders-start-rebellion-and-plan-a-company-coup#comment-34528Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:37:30 GMTPeter ChanBy: GougeFantastic. Support really needs to be lent to this before the dabacle goes too far.
If any tech writers in the US and the rest of the world took a more objective look at Symbian and Nokia devices in general they would realise that although Nokia has faltered, it's recent Symbian ^3 software and hardware is in fact reasonably good. Nokia needs to resturcture perhaps and focus on improving a select few devices ON TIME and they could at least have a more competitive and enticing phone.
Symbian or any other OS needs to have essentially two levels of front end UI to be a success, one simple version and an advanced version, so that people who want the iphone/android type experience can have it while others wanting the more complicated supposedly cludgy symbian style one can choose that.
When you have 28% market share of the smartphone market with such a diverse range of products and product types it is only logical that you will have, in relative terms, a greater volume of criticism whenever criticism is made, both of device an OS. Particularly when every device they make is compared with iphone or android, they are not all apples and pears, so such comparisons are just stupid and lend nothing to Nokias perception other than that it is failing to produce.
There is fundamentally nothing wrong with what Nokia was doing, more about how they were doing it and also more about why they allow the tech industry to be as critical. They need to extinguish the bad attitude they recieve from the market and improve the perception. They need to use Keynote style strategy and simple marketing to raise awareness of the good things their handsets do and reduce the criticism of the trivial points. Give their top line devices better names and a unique simple website that highlights the fantastic elements of products: True Multitasking, USB on the go, thta they are actually better phones than the competition particularly at making calls a phone first and foremeost but look too it also has apps and is a pocket pc etc.
The current strategy is not fine tuning the business it is wrecking it. If you had a calssic Ferrari that had seen better days you wouldn't rip out the engine and install an american 427 cu V8, you would strip it down and rebuild it with the same parts and fine tuning it to perform as well as it once did.
Ghttp://www.techeye.net/mobile/nokia-shareholders-start-rebellion-and-plan-a-company-coup#comment-34518
http://www.techeye.net/mobile/nokia-shareholders-start-rebellion-and-plan-a-company-coup#comment-34518Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:00:38 GMTGouge